Nell by Jeanette Baker

voice, a small band of soldiers had assembled in the courtyard. They were fully armed, Donal noted with satisfaction, and every one chosen for his ability to ride for twenty hours without rest. Deliberately, without emotion, he spoke. “The Sassanach king has ordered the killing of the Fitzgeralds.”
    A low murmur passed through the mounted ceithearn. “Do we ride for Maynooth, Donal?” a man asked.
    â€œAye.”
    Without a word of protest, they swung onto their mounts and urged them forward. Even at a steady gallop, Maynooth was four days away.
    ***
    The blackened bothys dotting the ruins of what was once the richest farmland in all of Ireland deepened the worry lines around Donal’s mouth. Silken Thomas was a fool. How could a man like Gerald Og have sired such a son? He pushed the wasteful thought from his mind. The Geraldines were doomed, all but Nell and her youngest brother, a boy of no more than eleven years, Gerald Fitzgerald, the tenth earl of Kildare.
    As Donal had suspected, Maynooth was completely gutted. Smoke hung in a black haze over the burned-out walls. He dismounted and walked through the roofless bawn , kicking the charred wood, his hand tight on his demilance, his eyes narrowed and hard.
    This house, on the edge of the English Pale, had been the grandest estate in all of Ireland. For four hundred years, the Fitzgeralds had ruled as uncrowned kings. Many had envied their power. Even in Ulster, chieftains bearing the royal blood of King Conor, the O’Neills, the O’Donnells, the Desmonds, the Maguires, had fought for the honor of paying homage to the great family of Fitzgerald. They had paid dearly for their allegiance. Gold, land, titles, the faith of their ancestors, even firstborn sons had been delivered into the hands of Englishmen.
    Donal shook his head. No one remembered that the Fitzgeralds weren’t native Irish. Bards sang of their arrival from Wales with the Anglo-Norman marcher lords. The most powerful family in Ireland, destroyed at the whim of a gout-filled, fat man who could not sire a living male child and whose tenuous claim to the English throne was through the illegitimate line of Margaret Beaufort.
    At the Battle of Bosworth, the Geraldines had fought for the Yorkist cause against the first Henry Tudor. The second Henry lived in fear that someone would remember that Fitzgerald blood came from the Plantagenets, a line older and more royal than his own. Gerald Fitzgerald, tenth earl of Kildare, was only eleven years old, but he was still a threat to the Tudor dynasty, as was anyone who tried to protect him.
    Fear gripped Donal’s throat. It was nearly winter, and Ireland was ravaged by war. Nell was sixteen years old, so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and for the first time in her life, without the protection of her father. Where in the name of heaven was she?

Four
    Kildare Hall, 1972
    Jilly leaned against an enormous yew tree, content just to watch Frankie throw sticks for the frolicking collies to run after and bring back to him. She had an artist’s appreciation for beauty, and, while too young to understand why the play of ropy muscles under a boy’s sun-browned skin made the breath catch in her throat, she recognized its impact on her senses. He’d taken off his shirt, and she noticed that he wasn’t as fair as most Irish boys. The combination of dark hair, bare skin, and fluid motion held her spellbound.
    A voice intruded upon her thoughts. Hello, Jillian.
    Reluctantly, Jilly turned around. “Nell. Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for ages.”
    Nell hesitated. Things have become rather complicated. I couldn’t come any sooner. She looked across the meadow. I see that you’ve found a new friend.
    Jilly shrugged. “He isn’t you.”
    Lowering herself to the ground, Nell folded her legs and looked up expectantly. Tell me about him.
    â€œHis name is Francis Maguire, and he comes to Kildare